In the field of firearms and related types of weapons two ever-present problems concerning a user are, the rate of firing of ammunition, and the supply of ammunition. In addressing the problem of the rate of firing of weapons, a variety of designs including semi-automatic and automatic weapons have been produced. Compared to single shot weapons, these weapons increase the number of rounds that can be fired in the course of a given time period by significantly reducing the time interval between the firing of successive rounds.
However, despite the success of these designs, they still suffer from the problem of maintaining a supply of ammunition to the user of the weapon. In some instances, conveyor like systems, such as those used in vintage WWI and WWII machine guns can supply ammunition at a rate sufficient to allow the user to “fire at will.” While this solves the problem of ammunition supply in a generic sense, in general these conveyor-like systems are not portable and thus only practically useful where the weapon is positioned in a fixed location. It is frequently desirable that weapons be portable since mobility is an important aspect of modern weapon use.
Others have attempted a variety of solutions to the ammunition supply problem, including designing ammunition boxes that hold a large number of rounds. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,155 (Balister) describes an ammunition box capable of holding up to 300 rounds of ammunition and which delivers the ammunition directly to the feed tray of the weapon.
Still others have attempted to solve the supply problem by connecting ammunition magazines to each other. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,805 (Clifton, Jr.) describes a device that secures two ammunition magazines together. The magazines are engaged by mounting brackets that are then attached to each other by screws.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,668,479 and 7,073,285 (Obong) describe devices for holding a plurality of firearm magazines. The device comprises multiple compartments formed by two halves of a bracket structure, each of which is configured to accept a magazine. Like the '805 patent discussed above, the Obong device secures the magazines in the holder by means of a screw that clamps the bracket halves together.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,874,266 (Kong) describes a device to provide storage of a firearm cartridge within the cavity of a handgun grip.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,497,043 (Clifton Jr.) describes a device to hold two magazines together at different heights.
Despite these attempts, the prior art has yet to provide an ammunition magazine system in which magazines that are otherwise unstackable can be stacked together to provide a larger number of rounds of ammunition to a user. Further, the prior art solutions all suffer from the limitation that magazines are not readily swappable so that a user can exchange a spent magazine for a full one, without having to remove the magazine currently engage in the weapon.